RAY Tackles An Outlandish OUTLANDER

Take a generous dose of Predator, mix it with Alien, The Thing, and Dragonslayer, and you get a pretty fair summary of Outlander, the newest attempt to wring thrills and chills out of worn-out science fiction tropes. James Caviezel, last seen writhing beneath the heavy hand of Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ, stars as Kainan, an alien who crash lands in Norway in the eighth century. Everyone onboard his craft is dead except for a monstrous alien creature named Morwen, who glows in the dark and looks a bit like the cat-like creature from the arena sequence in Attack of the Clones. Kainan meets up with a hearty group of Viking soldiers, who then decide to go after the bloodthirsty creature with their axes, swords, and torches. The story is as absurd as it sounds on paper. Unfortunately, writer/director Howard McCain thinks he is creating a serious masterpiece. There are dramatic showdowns in the dark, and slo-motion confrontations full of wide-eyed screaming. The soundtrack blares operatically. Missing from the proceedings is any sense of fun or genuine wonder. As Kainan, Caviezel shows only stern blankness. I understand he's an alien, but it might be nice to see some other emotion besides constipation; he makes a very boring lead. Fortunately there is life in some other performances around him. Jack Hustonis charismatic as Kainan's new brother-in-arms Wulfric. Distinguished presences such as John Hurt and Ron Perlmanshow up with sprightly and engaging performances as well. However, this is not a film about fine performances and nuanced character development; we want aliens and fighting in a concoction like this. This is the film's biggest problem. The Morwen creature, brought to life (of course) via computer graphics, is a ridiculous creature that glows like a fiber optic cat and lashes around without any sense of motion or physics. We get to see quite a bit of the monster - always a mistake in a film like this - and it fails to elicit any sense of dread or fear. It hurts the film that the effects of the creature look like they were created on a hotwired Nintendo 64. I thought the Morwen was a Van Helsing reject at times. It's a silly film without any sense of fun or excitement ... which is deadlier than an alien beast any day.